How a startup loses its spark • Hacker News Board

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#141

Post by tstrimple » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

gochi wrote: post #123

liquidpele wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget: Hiring remote contractors to “speed up” things. Dev will slow to 50% and meetings will double as you attempt unsuccessfully to teach them how to code.

Anytime a leader sees new hires or contractors as a "speed boost" is when it all goes to the dump. The sooner we get past this idea, and start viewing new hires/contractors as "speed bumps" the better. Bringing anyone new into the fold should always be a slow process!

Depends on the scope of the change and the objectives of the company. This is more true in larger organizations than startups, but not all technical problems you’re working on are directly linked to your value prop. I’ve seen good results in many cases where some systems are handed off to be managed by contractors so the FTE devs can focus their attention on improving the product which actually makes them money.

What I haven’t seen work is (which is what I think you’re describing more specifically) bringing on new hires or contractors to a project in flight in an attempt to deliver it more quickly. That’s where we get into Mythical Man Month territory.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#142

Post by ricardobayes » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

pojzon wrote: post #119

samhuk wrote: post #54

I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…

Im seen as a problem engineer even if its never my intention. Im a bit anxious and introverted and thus like to get my part done and focus on other things. This always results in rest of the team losing will to go far and beyond. I dont know what to do about it, beside aknowledging it exists. Do you say that ppl like me should simply quit and go working at sewege? I dont think I like that idea. So what can I do if th…

You can either educate others why you see things in a certain way.

If it's unexplainable, or the majority doesn't accept it, move on: change your ways or accept they are going to see you as such.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#143

Post by g9yuayon » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #138

g9yuayon wrote: post #128

I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in a few months. A really easy to use deployment tool, Asgard, just happ…

Importantly, this requires mature engineers and managers. Nothing worse (from personal experience) than working at a place that hires experienced engineering talent and then has a bunch of junior "leadership" telling them what to do. That's how you end up inundated with meetings and frameworks and blablabla. Obviously you need experienced developers to get stuff done without handholding, but you need managers that ca…

Absolutely. To start with, leaders must not be afraid of their teams making mistakes. Copying from another comment: "Netflix's culture demands very strong leadership and probably works only when the company is small enough. From CEO and down, leaders in every level need to know how to set context for their teams, give enough freedom to their teams, while making sure failures are manageable and success rate are maximized. That is, Netflix assumed that people would make mistakes and fail, but the trick was to ensure that failures do not hinder overall success of the teams and the company."

I'll give an example of the leadership style of Netflix. Jordan Zimmerman, a great engineer who created Apache Curator, once asked then the director of cloud platform, Yury, if he could open source Curator. Yury just casually said: okay, do it. Jordan was puzzled and asked: "don't I have to talk to an attorney? ". Yury smiled and asked: does an attorney help you write code? Jordan said no, and Yury concluded the conversation: then you don't have to talk to an attorney.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#144

Post by naijaboiler » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

fhd2 wrote: post #27

hliyan wrote: post #9

It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…

I think it's about more than just efficiencies of scale. You kinda play by different rules at a certain scale (not just based on employee count, also based on revenue), and suddenly you're subject to a lot more regulatory scrutiny. Plus, as a company becomes more valuable and attracts shareholders and managers with lower appetite for risk, a lot of money needs to be poured into risk management and avoidance. At a pre…

You're correct. It doesn't work. A lot of ails are necessarily inherent in scaling up. Once you get to 80ish, you just necessarily have to change your setup

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#145

Post by naijaboiler » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #28

mfwgenerics wrote: post #14

> Most startups needlessly accelerate their corporatization by copying the processes of larger companies, usually by poaching managers from large companies who bring their playbooks with them. This is painfully on point.

And no one ever stops to think "is that company doing that thing because it's effective, or is it something that they are getting away with because they are big."

Or that big companies are just solving big problems which are different from yours. There nothing i hate more than just rote copying solutions from bigger orgs

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#146

Post by simon_000666 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

Love the summary, don’t agree org entropy is inevitable and also don’t agree that equity is a silver bullet. Many times the cure is worse than the disease, it creates a whole bunch of behavioral anti-patterns e.g. people sticking around too long, politics and grandstanding in order to win more equity. In my experience profit-share provides same positive incentives without the downsides.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#147

Post by handsaway » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

flowerpew wrote: post #48

If only some guy wrote about alienation from labor. That would be crazy.

The article even reaches the conclusion that granting more ownership to employees might be a solution. What an idea! You could make a new mode of production out of this.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#148

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #50

lukaszkorecki wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The arguments articulated are entirely false I’d would disagree - I had the exact experience that the autor described. But you are right on this point > it’s entirely possible to build that intoxicating environment anywhere. It’s more about having a dynamic leader who assembles teams into collections of individuals who know precisely why they are there I still think it’s related to size and bad incentives. I heard…

Yes, thats correct. However the existence of X department at all refutes the authors premise and conclusion - and if X exists, it’s entirely possibly for Y to become better. Specifically this is entirely false due to the existence of X: > Is this preventable? I think not. I> f you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from: > Decreased skin in the game, which reduces team alignment > N^2 communication,…

> I’d also note that not everyone wants to work in a startup environment or are able to. Many engineers got into it for a good paycheck and don’t have much interest in anything particularly dynamic or engaging.

This is an excellent point. In my experience a majority of people value stability and predictability in their lives. They would rather have someone tell them what to do within well-structured bounds than contend with the ambiguity inherent in an early stage startup, or with solving massive product/business/technical problems with too many stakeholders to fit in a room.

I think the challenge is the people with the intrinsic motivation and stomach for the ambiguity can struggle to grow in large corporate environments that are full of good soldiers who stay in their lane. It's not uncommon for entry level ICs to come in with 3 or 4 layers of management between them and VP level, and then become pawns in middle management games, or stuck reporting to Peter-principle cases who teach them all the wrong lessons.

This is why I was really glad to have worked in startups when I was young, to really get exposed to all the moving parts and fundamentals of an operating business. It's just much easier to learn when the big picture is more legible, you have the latitude to iterate faster, make more mistakes, and see first-hand how things scale (or don't!) from the ground up. These days I see too many ivy league grad ex-FAANG who have all kinds of ideas of best practices with no understanding of why things are done that way at the tech giants, and extremely limited ability to reason from first principles about what makes sense in a different context.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#149

Post by extr » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

samhuk wrote: post #54

I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…

What is to be done if you find yourself in the first situation (too-technical leader)? I found myself there before a few times...reporting to someone who was no doubt a brilliant IC but has no concept of things like communicating vision or even basic project management. Would be curious to understand if anyone has been able to "fix" this from the IC side.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#150

Post by quercusa » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 6:01 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #100

zbentley wrote: post #76

> hire less The value of this recommendation cannot be overstated. Put another way: only hire when there is no other way to solve a problem, and even then do so carefully. Be willing to elongate timelines substantially as a result of this practice; the medium- and long-term costs of over hiring are much worse than the cost of later launches. Unfortunately, the funding environment and growth expectations for startups…

Coming from Canada (and Quebec especially) it's curious to see a recognition of this emerge in SV. Quebec has a problem that historically small enterprise funding came from sources that require commitment to hiring plans (i.e. in two years hire fifty people or you get nothing), which leads to absolute madness, and a unsurprising lack of successful exits. I had seriously underestimated how bad the hiring situation for…

> sources that require commitment to hiring plans

Are these local/provincial development funds that need to show job growth?

Any case where "we need to hire someone in the worst way" seems to deliver exactly that.